McGinley: Troop 507’s cleaning of the Mystic River

My name is Kyle McGinley and I’m a boy scout from Troop 507 in Winchester. I’m writing this article to tell my story of the Eagle Scout project I recently completed this past fall.

Attaining the rank of Eagle Scout is something that I have been working for many years now, but it is not just about the rank. Becoming a scout is more than just getting merit badges and rank advancements. It’s about service to your community, and getting you ready to become an active member of the community that you live in. By doing this project, I hope that I’ve paved the way for others to give back to the community as well.

When I became a Life Scout, the second to last rank in Boy Scouts, I began the process of picking an eagle project. When picking an eagle project, a person must submit a proposal to the local council that adheres to BSA safety standards and is worthy of judging your leadership ability. In other words, it needs to be a project with substantial weight to it, and not something that can be done in a single day.

In order to find such a project, I began asking around Medford. I went to a city council meeting to listen in on what the needs of the people in the city were. When I talked to the councilmen, they pointed me to George Scarpelli who had an idea about helping out the crew team. He told me to talk to the coach of the crew team, Edward McCormick about something that he wanted to have done.

I called McCormick the next day and he spoke to me about cleaning the Mystic River. As someone who was on the river daily he knew about the issues plaguing the river. He told me about the pollution problem of the Mystic. The Mystic River is a place that is used by hundreds of people from the neighboring cities. These people shouldn't have to be subjected to the terrible water quality of the river.

The wildlife in the river is affected as well. There is already an issue with the invasive water chestnuts species depriving the river of oxygen. This kills the fish and other wildlife present in the river. There doesn't need to be more issues for the wildlife in the form of trash and dumping.

The Mystic River has a Federal Water Quality Report of a D, and it used to be an F. The Mystic is one of the most heavily urbanized rivers in the area, and as a result suffers from heavy urban pollution as well as pollution from the dumping of materials. Pollution is not just dropping materials straight into the river either. The majority of the pollution is storm water runoff coming from storm drains. These contain chemical pollutants as well as trash that is thrown away in storm drains. The no dumping in drains stickers on the storm drain sidewalks were created to help prevent dumping. Despite this, dumping still takes place. We must mitigate this problem by not throwing trash away in the storm drains.

Knowing all this information about the river I set out to clean it. Using a team of scouts, crew team members and friends I was able to launch groups of canoes with a motorboat to clean the banks and water of the river from the Medford Crew docks to the Route 16 Bridge past Medford Square. Armed with trash pikes, grabber tools and trash bags we set out on the water and collected around 500 pounds of trash.

I want to thank everyone who helped me complete the project, especially councilmen Scarpelli and my scoutmaster, Chris Rogers. Rogers was able to provide qualified supervision as well as drive the wakeless motorboat and Scarpelli was able to get me canoes and tools needed to carry out the project. Finally, I want to give thanks for Edward McCormick. Without him, this project wouldn’t have happened in the first place. Thank you for everything! This is just one piece of the puzzle however. I need the cooperation of everyone to help make the Mystic a better place not just now, but in the future as well.